Monthly Archives: May 2011

Just saw this at Anthony Watts. “Russia, Japan and Canada told the G8 they would not join a second round of carbon cuts under the Kyoto Protocol at United Nations talks this year and the US reiterated it would remain outside the treaty, European diplomats have said. From our SMH no less. How will this help our GreenLabor Govt in its efforts to introduce a Carbon Tax ?

Look Cate – we love your movies – thanks for all the hours of enjoyment – and we look forward to enjoying your work for years to come – but please you should stick to what you know best. You are too good an actor to lend your image in political advertisements.

“And finally, doing something about climate change,” Blanchett adds.

Sorry Cate but nothing we do in Australia can possibly make any difference – as this graphic comparing Chinese and Australian emissions proves.

What this tax will certainly achieve is to reduce the standard of living for many Australians – who will be overwhelmingly be less wealthy than you. Not a good look for you I don’t think.

We could de-industrialise Australia – just leaving some quarries for the Chinese – and the drop in global emissions would not be noticed alongside the scale of Chinese increases.

In the same advert – Michael Caton says, “What if we say yes, to making big companies pay, when they pollute our skies?

“We’d be saying yes to less carbon pollution”.

What pathetic GreenLabor spin – trying to blame “big polluters” – when the reality is that all of us who use electricity, or drive our cars, or fly in an airliner, or eat bought food, ride a bus, ride a train, use manufactured products – we are the “polluters”, according to the rationale behind the crazy IPCC inspired GreenLabor great big new Carbon Dioxide Tax.

This exceeds the 18 days under zero which were recorded in May of 1959 and 1961. The record standing now is from 1957 which had 27 days with minimums under zero. Data at Canberra Airport station # 70014 starts in 1939.

I understand this is weather not climate but we all know how the BoM trumpets any warm record it can in the main stream media – so we will be interested to see what the BoM says after the month ends. And we must remember this cold record was set despite the ever increasing Canberra urban heat island.

A group of leading scientists contributing to the development of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s (MDBA) plan has pulled out of the process, calling the plan to fix the ailing river system seriously flawed.

The Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists says it can not be part of a plan which it says will fail to fix the river system but waste billions of taxpayer dollars.

The group says no less than 4,000 gigalitres must be returned to the Murray-Darling river system in order to fix it, but says it appears that will not happen under the draft plan so it has resigned from the process.

The current cold snap and snow on the Alps etc has got the media chattering.

I have had people asking me – did the BoM predict this cold snap? Well – their daily weather forecasting saw it coming – but the three month Outlooks are on another time scale altogether for a cold snap that might last a few days or a week.

Anyway – I checked out the BoM Outlook predictions for Autumn, March-April-May – and tried to assess real world results to date.

This link shows you the two Outlook maps, one for maximum (day) and one for minimum (night) . Looking at the SE alpine area max – Melbourne to Sydney approx – Autumn days are predicted to be warmer and a prominent cool patch is predicted over SE Queensland. Minimums in the SE are predicted to be warmer again compared to the maximums.

After that I tried to assess real world results to date at this BoM page. Now making maps for the Maximum Anomaly – choose a “1 month” timespan – that should bring up the map for April then if you carefully click on the little grey “EARLIER” tab – you can flip the map back to March. It is clear that the SE maximum temperatures have been anomalously cool those two months. You can also change the time from “1 month” to “1 week” – and it is clear that early May days were were anomalously cooler in Victoria but just slightly warmer over the Alps.

On balance, I think the BoM Autumn maximum temperature Outlook will probably be proven too warm when all the May data is in.

To the Minimum Outlook for Autumn – just change your map selection to Minimum Anomaly – and follow the same procedure as above for the maximum.

The March map shows the SE was patchy but on average fairly neutral.

The April map shows the SE was cooler than normal.

The “1 week” map shows most of May to date has been notably cooler than normal in the SE.

So on balance the real world minimum temperatures in the SE have been cooler than normal – not very warm as the Autumn Outlook predicted. But we have a couple of weeks to go.

In a nutshell, the BoM needs a scorcher late May heatwave in the SE to bring Autumn temperatures to match their Outlook.

Just before the Copenhagen climate change conference in December 2009 (COP15) – an event known now as Climategate rattled the IPCC world as over a thousand emails and hundreds of other computer files were released, hacked or stolen from the University of East Anglia, Climate Research Unit (CRU).

Climategate was originally ignored by our mainstream media and even today is seldom reported – but Climategate still rolls on with revelations of poor IPCC science periodically making news to this day.

Where this affects your GreenLabor Government is that Climategate has played a part in convincing many Australian voters that there is something basically wrong with IPCC science that needs addressing before we rush to implement a Carbon Tax.